How do living and nonliving things interact?

A:

Living and nonliving things interact with each other by forming an ecosystem, where living things can obtain nutrients and energy from nonliving things through chemical processes. The nonliving things in an environment are known as abiotic factors, while living things are known as biotic factors.

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Examples of abiotic factors in an ecosystem include sunlight, soil, water and temperature. Examples of biotic factors include plants, microbes, birds and mammals. These factors interact with each other to provide biotic factors with the necessary components they need to live. One example is through an energy cycle. Sunlight passes heat energy to plants to make them grow. The plants are eaten by animals and transformed into energy. When the animals die, they decompose, providing nutrients to bacteria.

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Non-living things in the desert are water, air, energy, substrate and chemical constituents, also known as nutrients. The non-living elements combined with the living organisms make up the desert ecosystem.

An energy pyramid is a graphical representation of how energy flows in an ecosystem The pyramid consists of trophic, or nutritional, levels. It shows how energy decreases and becomes less available for organisms as it enters every trophic level, as well as the amount of energy lost to the atmosphere in the form of heat.

Abiotic factors of a pond are all elements that are in or that affect the ecosystem of a pond other than the living, or biotic, factors. Abiotic factors vary by pond and include a wide range of components such as temperature, stratification, density, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, salinity, and calcium and nitrogen levels. Even the length of the day and the climate are considered abiotic factors of a pond.

A habitat is where an organism or a community of organisms lives, and a niche is the specific place an organism has in an ecosystem. A habit can help define the niche of particular creature but cannot describe it entirely.